Hibbett Reading - Oscar

There's a common saying that goes "Don't get married to your job" - a warning to not get too attached to the work you do in return for payment, for if you invest your entire identity into something that may not always work out in your favor, you'll never be successful. The same saying is present in creative circles ("don't get married to your song/writing etc.), a warning to not obsess over minute details lest the larger work falls to the wayside. 

I think the foremost thing I took away from Hibbett's words was his advice that "finding some affinity with the work that you translate is essential." It seems that in the case of translation one should at least try to become intimate with their work, if not marrying it - he compares it to method acting, finding some kind of connection between yourself and your target to develop a mental attitude that allows for more authentic output. You should be obsessing over minute details, because that is the nature of translation: trying to convey those details across language, choosing between the most appropriate way to do so, or even to omit it. Hibbett seems to say that at the very least, you should enjoy the act itself and the opportunity for immersion that it presents you. If you can get intimate with and enjoy the original text for what it is, translating it just means you get to enjoy it twice over.

Something else of interest to me was the question about "naturalization or assimilation of the text to the target language", especially the 第三の文学 theory. I confess that I also held this view at the start - surely the readers would be aware that this is a translated work, and it's only natural that it would sound stilted or unnatural in English, right? And if so, what's stopping us from doing the most literal, most faithful translation we can, and letting the readers puzzle it out? I'm curious as to what limits everyone else has for something that would be too unnatural/unacceptable to call a 'translation'.